I was recently for a long weekend in Southern Italy, in Puglia and Basilicata.
The food there was very tasty, a lot of seafood and other fresh but simple ingredients.
i Will definitely try soon some of the local recipes like the “patate riso e cozze” (potatoes. rice and mussels) or “orecchiette con cime di rapa” (orechiette pasta with broccoli rabe) and so on…

When in Matera, a wonderful town, I bumped into the town’s farmer market.
There were a lot of fresh greens, olives and other yummy vegetables.
But what caught my eyes were the local cheese called caciocavallo – a semi matured cheese made from cow’s milk.
The best of the best was though the sundried tomatoes – called in Italian pomodori secchi – so fragrant and red. I even bargained a bit for them 🙂
The orange flavored linguine I bought from another picturesque town -Alborebello.

When I returned home I improvised a recipe based on these 3 main ingredients: sundried tomatoes, caciocavallo cheese and orange linguine and here is the recipe:

Ingredients (4 servings):

250 g linguine all’arancia (linguine with orange)

50-75 g salted sundried tomatoes

200 g caciocavallo cheese (or other hard cheese like provolone)

Linguine all’Arancia

5 garlic cloves

100 ml heavy cream

1 small chilli pepper

virgin olive oil

Preparation method:

Cook the linguine pasta according to their instructions in salty water.

Soak the sundried tomatoes in water.

Chop coarsely the garlic cloves.

Cut the cheese in small pieces.

Heat 2-3 tablespoons olive oil in a pan over medium heat.

Add the chopped garlic, chili pepper and sundried tomatoes and fry until fragrant and the tomatoes are a bit roasted.

Pomodori Secchi – Sundried Tomatoes

Add the cheese to the pan and fry a few seconds until it starts to melt.